The East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad in a flier wants it known that this week, beginning on Sunday, is National Beach Safety Week, and, in keeping with the theme, has provided the following desiderata:

“Learn to swim — promote the Y.M.C.A. and the junior lifeguard programs.”

“Swim near a lifeguard.”

“Swim with a buddy.”

“Check with the lifeguards as to daily conditions.”

“Obey posted signs and flags, and know your location for 911 calls.”

“Keep the beach and water clean.”

“Learn rip current safety.”

“Enter water feet first.”

“Wear a life jacket when appropriate or mandated.”

“Use sunscreen and drink water.”

The die-off in Flanders of tens of thousands of bunker (menhaden) that peaked on Friday has been blamed on extremely low levels of oxygen in the Peconic Estuary due to an excess of nitrogen, which in turn brought on the “mahogany tide,” a dense brown algal bloom.

A month earlier, 100 diamondback turtles washed up dead in the Peconics after eating shellfish that contained the toxic algae. The nitrogen overload was caused, a Stony Brook University scientist said, by outflow from a sewage treatment plant in Riverhead.

Fish kills are relatively common and are not all related to man-made pollution. Bunker, an oily “industrial” species once processed en masse at the Promised Land plant, are a favorite prey of striped bass and bluefish. Schools of these predators often herd bunker into shallow water. As a result, the bunker that are spared the onslaught die because oxygen in the shallows is depleted during the fray. However, this particular incident bears the mark of Cain.

In Genesis, God marked Cain for killing his brother Abel. It was a warning to stop the killing of one’s fellow man. But why in the year 2015 do we continue to separate our species, in both a physical as well as an ethical sense, from other living things — hell, from all the resources of the earth? It’s like there are two plays being staged at the same time, the one in which elephants are being poached by the thousands for their ivory and oxygen-generating wilderness is razed in the name of climate-changing drilling, while on the other stage thousands of people die because one group believes in the holiness of the Prophet’s advisor, the other in the Prophet’s son-in-law, and a former Olympian changes from Cain to Mabel to wild applause.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for Bruce — or I guess it’s Caitlyn now — for anyone who finds personal happiness any way they can without hurting others. But talk about fiddling while Rome burns.

I have now climbed down off my soapbox to report that the fluke fishing is about as good as it gets. I ran into Tommy Cusimano, captain of the Sea Wife IV at Goldberg’s deli in Montauk on Monday. As you will recall, Montauk was basically underwater on Monday, cold, with a wind-driven rain. It was well before noon, and he said he’d already taken a party fishing.

“There are some bass around, but the fluking is excellent. On Friday and Saturday it couldn’t have been better, a lot of 10-pounders.”

There are basically two types of saltwater fishermen, one that likes to hunt the bottom, the other that prefers hooking up mid-water or on the surface. The bottom is where fluke dwell, for the most part. I’ve actually seen them feeding on the surface off the east jetty of the Montauk Harbor inlet. If I’d had a rod I could have cast something that looked like a squid strip at them. That would have been one to remember, if I’d hooked up. If, if, if.

Speaking of which, by this time last year the leaderboard for the Montauk SurfMasters spring shootout posted a 52.12-pound striper caught by Matt McDermott, a 47.3-pounder that John Bruno hooked, and a 43.7-pound bass caught by Ben McCarron, all before the end of May.

But that doesn’t mean we are not experiencing some great striped bass fishing. Paul Apostolides of Paulie’s Tackle shop in Montauk reported “the best schoolie run in about five years.” He was referring to the run of smaller striped bass that surfcasters have been catching all along the south-facing beaches for the past several weeks.

I asked Captain Cusimano if he thought the bunker die-off in the Peconic Estuary could account for the relative absence of big bass in the area. He said he doubted it, at least here where the estuary empties into Block Island Sound.

But who knows? Nobody really knows, which I count as a good thing. During my two years working on a commercial fishing boat, the crew used to argue this question: If a fisherman of any stripe, sport or market, knew there was only one fish of a particular species left, would he try to catch it? There were four of us including the captain. It was a split decision, although I don’t remember the breakdown. In any case it’s an interesting question that pits tradition and instinct against reason.

On the one hand, you might reason that if there were only one left, you might as well catch it because it can’t reproduce. On the other hand, what if she were about to lay eggs? 

The question remains.

The current building boom has laid down a lot of big trees before they had a chance to leaf out, but it apparently hasn’t deterred the birds from returning from the south. While some osprey nesting platforms continue to go barren, like the one on the edge of Northwest Creek in Barcelona and another in the marsh off of Gerard Drive in Springs, many traditional pairs are back including those at Multi Aquaculture and other annually occupied venues on Napeague, and around Accabonac Harbor, Sag Harbor Cove, and North Sea Harbor. They’re feeding on whatever they can — alewives are few and far between thus far and winter flounders have practically disappeared.

I wonder if the one on the platform in the field on the west side of Deerfield Road far from any water body will bring forth chicks once more or the platform will be abandoned. A very bright spot in osprey reproduction locally is the return of a pair of ospreys to the nest in upper Sag Harbor Cove to the west of Otter Pond in Sag Harbor. That nest has remained barren for at least four years following the death of the female after a run of almost 15 consecutive years. Anton Hagen, who lives nearby, is worried that the crows in the area, which are wont to harass the pair, will spoil their return.

Other fish-eating water birds have returned to familiar haunts. Great blue herons, black-crowned night herons, great and snowy egrets, as well as the glossy ibis are all back in town. Terry Sullivan has been regularly checking out and photographing the birds that hang around and wade in Sagg Pond’s upper stretches and on Saturday there was one or more of every kind. On Sunday the Third House Nature Center group, with its East Hampton High School interns, was studying the wildlife and plant life of the Big Reed Pond watershed in Montauk when three glossy ibis flew over. Were they on their way to Gardiner’s Island where they have nested in the past?

The spring peepers continue to peep but it’s going to take a major rain to get them into higher gear. They generally finish mating by the first of May so they better get a wiggle on. Wood frogs need spring rains to get them going. Some of the vernal ponds where these two frogs breed each year are holding water but others, like Daniel’s Hole in Wainscott, are almost completely dry.

It will be interesting to see if the two pairs of bald eagles that have been nesting on the East End — at the Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island and on Gardiner’s Island — will nest again. The Gardiner’s Island pair has been around for almost seven years. The few pairs of great-horned owls nesting locally should be winding up shortly, as they began in February, but the record severity of that month may have slowed them down. And will we be lucky to hear at least one whippoorwill calling at dusk and later come the second and third weeks of May? I don’t think so.

What kind of year weather-wise will befall us? It could be quiet; it could be fierce. Should the tropical storms get going and be guided in our direction by the jet stream and stationary high-pressure systems to the west, we and the tourists could be in for some exciting moments. If so, the ocean beaches of Montauk and those along Block Island Sound could take a major hit. The only thing protecting downtown Montauk from a major catastrophe in the event of a Category 2 or higher tropical storm is the row of motels and condos acting as ersatz revetments between Umbrella Beach and Ditch Plain.

We are told by Stony Brook Southampton that the red and purple tides could have a field day because of the high input pollutants, nitrates in particular, streaming over ground and underground into our Peconic Estuary harbors, coves, tidal creeks, and inlets. Good for them, not good for fish, bay scallops, clams, and eelgrass, however. What we have to keep in mind is that while runoff from rain reaches these waters in less than a few days, the nitrates from the underground septic discharges move to the nearest marine waters at a measly one foot per day. If you live halfway between East Hampton Village and Springs, for example, it will take more than 25 years for your septic wastewater to get into Three Mile Harbor.

So here we go skipping and tripping into May. We can be assured that the shads, dogwoods, beach plums, mountain laurels, bird’s-foot violets, lupines, and other early bloomers will make their appearance. To what degree their presence will be manifested is another question. According to Pat Hope, who is diligently studying the local tick population, the male lone star ticks were out in force in the first week of April, followed by the females with the white spots or “lone stars” on their backs a week later. Black-legged or deer ticks are now in the minority but they still carry babesiosis and Lyme disease organisms.

Mosquitoes generally make their appearance in mid-May. The oak and hickory leaves have yet to pop, so we don’t know yet what kind of gypsy moth and inchworm population we will be dealing with. And there’s that new kid on the block, the southern pine borer, which from all reports is ravishing the pitch pines throughout Long Island, including those on the South Fork. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say on “Saturday Night Live” when it was funny, “It’s always something.”

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

I’ve been researching how waves are formed in order to create, and by July present, a narrated video explanation for visitors to the new Oceans Institute of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum. We hope to open the doors by the Fourth of July.

Waves, their sound, size, and great variety of shapes, are fascinating. They easily hypnotize us, lull us to sleep, scare us — or thrill us if we’re surfers — and make us sick when what our inner ear senses doesn’t agree with what our eyes perceive. 

Reading about the physics of waves has been interesting (and challenging) for me, having had a more intimate and immediate relationship with them as a surfer, sailor, and shipmate on various blue-water vessels over the years. I have bodysurfed and ridden waves big and small on surfboards of all shapes and sizes. I have sailed and fished aboard a great variety of O.P.B.s, otherwise known as Other People’s Boats, whose maintenance and expense was blessedly not my own.

Three out of all these vessels stand out (in no particular order) because of how they were able to find the sweet spots in waves, a function of their designers’ almost mystical mix of intuition and experience at sea.

The first favorite “vessel” is my 8-foot-9 surfboard with a three-fin “thrus­ter” arrangement that Billy Hamil­ton, its shaper, named the “missing link,” a cross between a longboard designed for riding small to medium-size waves and a “gun” designed for reasonably large waves.

I bought the Link secondhand from a shop in the town of Hanalei on the island of Kauai. Jeff Hakman, the surfer for whom it was custom made for a surf trip to Fiji, had traded it in. With me on board, it has tasted waves in Hawaii, the Caribbean, South Africa, Indonesia, and, of course, Montauk. Billy Hamilton is a surfer who built his knowledge of how waves break into the board’s design so that it actually seeks a wave’s sweet spot, or “trim.” A few years ago, I told Billy over Mai Tais in a Waikiki watering hole how much I loved the Link. I told him I planned to retire it to a place of honor on one of the walls in my home. He said, “Oh no, good surfboards are like ’55 Chevys. You have to ride ’em till they fall apart.”

The second vessel was Capt. Frank Mundus’s shark-fishing charter boat, Cricket II. I fished on Cricket a number of times, including a three-day trip to the Dumping Grounds (the government dumped tons of munitions there) in open ocean well east of Montauk. On that trip, Cricket steamed into a storm that generated swells in the 10-to-12-foot range. Cricket was built by a fisherman after the low-profile, beamy hull design popular in the Chesapeake Bay. Frank told me he tweaked the design according to what he imagined it needed to remain peaceful on a heaving sea. He nailed it.

I became aware of Cricket’s balance as Captain Mundus cooked dinner in a pressure cooker he’d positioned below deck, set right in the center of boat. The cooker did not move. It and those of us sitting around it might as well have been sitting on flat ground, while at the same time we looked up out of the companionway and through the portholes at waves towering over Cricket as she slid over their peaks and back down into the troughs between them. Even her back deck was peaceful. Cricket was built to work with the sea, not against her, to find the sweet spot among her waves. 

The third vessel designed to find the sweet spot was the United States Coast Guard Academy’s three-masted barque-rigged training ship. She was built of Krupp steel in 1936 as a trainer for Germany’s Kriegsmarine. Measuring nearly 300 feet stem to stern, Eagle was designed after the steel square-rigged ships that carried bulk cargo such as grain and guano to and from Europe by way of Cape Horn to the west coast of Chile and even as far as Australia. They were seaworthy and efficient, and powered entirely by wind.

Sailors know, and power-boaters wonder, “What’s the big deal” about sailboats. The big deal is the sense of — how to describe it? — well-being, comfort, at-oneness with the sea on a boat that moves through the water under a press of sail. Where a powerboat rolls port to starboard as well as stem to stern in heavy seas, a sailing vessel’s side-to-side motion is reduced, steadied by her sails’ leeward press (not so true with the wind directly astern).

Sailboats designed to be “seakindly” make the natural connection to wind, and waves. Some designs are better than others. Eagle was built using a combination of sail, rigging, and hull design centuries in the making. I had the very good fortune of sailing across the Atlantic aboard the barque in the early summer of 1994.

Because of a series of low-pressure systems spinning off the U.S. coast behind us, we sailed under blue skies, all sails braced sharp in 35-to-40-knot winds for nearly half the three-week passage via the Azores. The seas were large, at least 12 feet, probably more. I was one of a few civilians on board. Another was a man retired from the Merchant Marine. We were standing on the bridge watching Eagle’s sharp cutwater slice huge arcs of green wave into the air to leeward.

We stood ooh-ing and wowing on the steep hill that was Eagle’s deck. She was making her hull speed, nearly 17 knots. The retired merchantman said that in all his years at sea, he had never been on a ship that felt so comfortable at that speed under those sea conditions. I figured he meant ships with the same ratio of overall length to wave-size ratio. I can’t imagine a super tanker pays much attention to 12-foot seas. Eagle finds the sweet spot, rides rather than wallows up, over and down the waves she continues to meet nearly 80 years after her christening.

The book I’m reading makes the point that seamen knew about waves by living among them. But only recently have we gotten a handle on the science of it, how wind blowing across the sea’s surface creates a rhythm that matches the shape and power of atmospheric pulses — the expanding bands of a hurricane for instance. Pulses that are translated into a train of sine curves above and below the surface whose rhythm has been translated into very dry equations. I’m trying to find their sweet spot.

The weekend was a blaze of glory. The sun shone, the bay waters were mostly calm, the shads and sweet cherries began to bloom to the west, and the shads along Napeague and in Montauk were on the verge of busting out. Soon the oaks, hickories and sassafras will flower and leave. The red maples and Norway maples have been flowering for more than a week now. They’ll soon sprout leaves; they always lead the pack where foliation is concerned.

I spent a wonderful Sunday with Montauk’s Third House Nature Club and its three East Hampton High School senior interns. I brought along Howard Reisman, a master ichthyologist and retired Long Island University professor, to help test the waters of Big Reed Pond. Like Georgica Pond and Mill Pond, it has been having a problem lately with blue-green algae. There had been a big fish kill in 2011, and the pond has yet to recover.

The East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department loaned us a 50-foot beach seine. Howard taught the group how to use it and we were able to make a couple of seines despite the large masses of gelatinous blue-green algae clogging the mesh. We caught (and returned unharmed) freshwater killifish, Fundulus diaphanous, and one teenage white perch, Morone Americana. Both species are common in Fort Pond a few miles to the west of Big Reed. Fort Pond is the second largest pond on Long Island after Lake Ronkonkoma.

Our seining was promising because, while we didn’t catch any eels, largemouth bass, or pumpkinseeds, some of the killies were in the early stage of development, which indicated that their reproduction is carrying. It is too early to say if the fish are making a comeback, but there were spots along the eastern and southern parts of the pond where you could see clear to the bottom in five feet of water. That may be because the noxious blue-green algae have just started to reproduce, as the water temperature until recently has been quite cold as a result of the harsh winter during which the pond was frozen solid for almost three months.

Big Reed Pond is one of those water bodies that was formed by sand washing westerly along the north side of Montauk Point, trapping behind it water lying between the north slope of the geologic till and Block Island Sound. Oyster Pond, a little to the east of Big Reed, has a similar origin, but it is yet to be completely landlocked. It has an intermittent opening to the sea and is brackish for part of the year, thus supporting a healthy oyster stock. Big Reed has a dug channel that empties into Little Reed Pond to the east, which in turn is connected by a tidal stream to Lake Montauk.

The Third House Nature Club is working to clear the channel and replace a culvert under the road to the pond so that water can flow more fully and fish such as eels, alewives, and white perch can move between Big Reed and Lake Montauk, which is open to Block Island Sound year round.

One has to remember that until a few hundred years or so ago the beach along the north side of Montauk between the Lighthouse and the Lake Montauk inlet was building seaward by virtue of the re-entrant sand. In the last 10 years at least, the beach — with the exception of Gin Beach, protected by the sand-blocking jetty on the east side of Lake Montauk — has been cutting back at more than five feet per year. With rising sea level and cyclical northeasters and tropical storms afoot both Big Fresh and Oyster Ponds are fated to become part of Block Island Sound.

On Sunday egrets and great blue herons were flying, landing, and fishing. Several cormorants flew around and a couple splashed in. An osprey flew back and forth over the nesting platform that the club recently erected on the pond’s north shore, but did not land. Ospreys haven’t nested in Montauk for several years now after abandoning a nest up on the hill east of Lake Montauk.

Painted turtles splashed into the water from their sunning perches on glacial erratics as we approached. Those who know the pond well have seen large snapping turtles in it as well from time to time.

On the way back to Sag Harbor, Howard and I checked out the four ponds that were created around Lake Montauk to trap sediment and reduce nitrates prior to runoff water flowing over weirs and making its way into the lake by way of culverts under West Lake Drive, East Lake Drive, and Montauk Highway. The fifth pond, which was to be on a piece of town land occupied by a private resident’s driveway off East Lake Drive near the trail to Big Fresh Pond, was never installed. The other four are doing well, but they are collectively looking forward to the time when they will be joined by a fifth.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

It’s getting warm. We need some rain. The small rainwater ponds are drying up, the peepers are barely peeping, but the shads are blooming nicely and the dogwoods are out at the same time.

I was working in the yard all day Monday and listening to the birds as I went. Funny, there are almost as many birds that moved up here from the south following World War II, as those that have been around for a couple hundred years or more. These “new” birds haven’t been new for a long time now, they continue to occupy more and more territories with each passing year.

The common residential birds that I grew up with in Mattituck in the depression and war years were the catbird, blue jay, grackle, towhee, starling, house sparrow, robin, house wren, red-winged blackbird, song sparrow, chickadee, downy woodpecker, Baltimore oriole, common crow, great crested flycatcher, wood thrush, brown thrasher, chimney swift, barn swallow, whippoorwill, and flicker, to name several.

Today around my house catbirds, robins, red-winged blackbirds, Baltimore orioles, and crested flycatchers were singing their territorial songs, but they were almost out-sung by the likes of cardinals, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, red-bellied woodpeckers, and fish crows, all of which were lacking or extremely rare prior to 1955. The breeding notes of song sparrows, house wrens, wood thrush, and flicker were not part of the chorus.

Birds and flying insects are the most common colonizers. For a few years now the southern pine beetle has been ravishing our native pitch pines. Bats fly but there have been no new species from other parts of the United States settling here. The parrots that make their home in New York City and San Francisco parks didn’t come from the equatorial zone, they came from pet stores, as did the interloper house finch.

Birds carry ticks almost to the degree that mammals do. There is no doubt in my mind that they were responsible for moving southern lone star ticks to northern climes. Birds are also carried here and about by weather systems, cyclones, and such, but not to the degree that tiny flying insects are.

It takes several generations to measure dramatic changes in a locale’s flora and fauna. Today a few coyotes roam Long Island habitats; two generations from now they could become as common as raccoons and opossums are today.

Southern plants are moving north as well. Since plants are sessile, they don’t perambulate like mammals and other vertebrates do, they move in quietly with hardly a whisper. That is how the southern red oak reached Montauk and how others are most likely sneaking in but have yet to be recognized.

Before there was global warming, there was continental drift, natural dispersion, and a host of other dispersal mechanisms, many of which were passive, that moved species from one place to another as immigrants. But, notwithstanding those natural dispersion routes which have been with us since time immemorial, humans are responsible for the most species transplants. In less than 400 years humans have transformed almost every natural pre-existing habitat into a pigsty of sorts, particularly so where plants and insects are concerned.

A good near-at-hand example of this popped up during a field trip to the northern edge of Montauk Point with a group of Montauk School kids on May 6. What did those industrious students find that I had heard of but never seen? The Japanese shore crab no bigger than the last joint of your middle finger. How did such a little critter get all the way from the western Pacific shores of Honshu to Montauk Point? You tell me. It’s a jungle out there.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

In May, the sea draws a gauzy shroud over the southerly half of Montauk just as a blanket of white blossoms eases winter’s final chill. It’s as though the light, ghostly fog whispers a wakeup to the shadblow, “You can come out now.”

The spring fog bisects the peninsula right down the middle, north and south. We know we can drive to the sunny north side if we tire of the fog, or descend into it, especially east of Deep Hollow Ranch into the Montauk moorlands, to experience our unique bond to the sea. 

On Monday morning, I had some business at the Bridgehampton National Bank on the Circle in Montauk. Downtown was fogged in. I brought my deposit to the counter and as the teller added my pittance to the bank’s coffers we remarked on the beauty of our fog, how lucky we were to be able to drive out of it if we wanted. “And, you can smell the fish,” she said.

So true, and what a gift. The fog that whispers awake the shad also carries redolent proof that the spring fish migration is well under way — a sweet smell that no doubt includes the fragrance of blossoming seaweeds.

Surfcasters, who also take their cues from the fog, have been working the regular spots. The short jetty in front of the old East Deck Motel is producing small striped bass. The Georgica jetties in East Hampton, too. Bigger stripers have not arrived yet, or at least they are not being caught. As of Tuesday, those competing in the Montauk SurfMaster’s spring tournament have not brought one fish to the scales. The ocean remains unusually cold.

Big bluefish, the skinny ones called “runners” that scout out front of the voracious herd, have arrived in and around the Accabonac Harbor inlet.

As usual, bass have made their appearance at the South Ferry slip on North Haven, and around Orient Point. Harvey Bennett, owner of the Tackle Shop on Montauk Highway in Amagansett, said he heard reports of fluke already arriving in Gardiner’s Bay where pound traps are catching a smattering of squid. Anglers are jigging them from docks that cannot be named.

Someday someone’s going to take a video camera underwater to record the dramatic moment when a school of bluefish meets a school of squid, and the squid high-tail it in an explosion of black ink. I think Justin Burkle, Montauk surfer, founder of the 41-Degrees North brand of clothing, and an extraordinary photographer with a gift for capturing underwater images, will be the one. He coined the phrase “If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen out there,” and it’s happening now.

I always think of Tom and Francis Lester this time of year. If it’s warm, May is the month when winter flounder work their way out of their muddy winter cocoons. When there were flounder around, the Lesters would leave their Bonac environs to set fykes (underwater traps) along the bottom of Lake Montauk to catch them. I made a few trips with them. There is no humor like Bonac humor. Finest kind.

The sport season for flounder began on April 1 and ends on May 30. Two fish per day are allowed, measuring at least 12 inches long.

Surely, the essence of summer flounder, fluke, makes up part of the sea’s spring fragrance. Montauk’s smaller draggers have been working the “backside,” that is the ocean side, of Montauk for fluke. The recreational fluke season begins on Sunday with an 18-inch minimum size limit, and a five-fish-per-day bag.

Watch for the lilacs to bloom. Their fragrant purple blossoms signal the arrival of squateague, as the Indians called them, or tiderunners — weakfish by any other name — a species with some of the most beautiful coloring in nature. They taste good too. 

We just had a glorious weekend in which all the hardwoods, save for the white oaks, which always are the last to foliate, were festooned with fresh green leaves. Thus it was a perfect setting for the arrival of the New World warblers, which every year near the middle of May stop on Long Island to feed and rest after a long flight from their southern winter climes.

Many species will stop to breed; a few are rare breeders here. Most warblers like to hang out in the foliage. Very few are found on the ground. Perhaps that is why the Rubinstein sisters were out in Stony Hill Woods in Amagansett on Sunday checking out the newcomers and those that have been here for some time.

Four eyes and four ears are better than two. In their Sunday afternoon foray Karen and Barbara saw 9 different warbler species and heard 5 others, for a total of 14. Quite a day! A fellow birder, Vicki Bustamante, was at Shadmoor Park in Montauk at the same time and she saw and heard a Lawrence warbler, a rare recessive hybrid species from a cross between the golden-wing warbler and blue-wing warblers. It breeds true and sings like either of the two parents, both of which have buzzy songs according to Roger Tory Peterson.

Additional good signs from the Rubinsteins were the presence of a lot of wood thrushes, a species of the deciduous woods that has been thinning of late. Other species liking that habitat are Baltimore orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks. They recorded several of the former and a pair of the latter. The parula warbler is one of the most beautiful of the warblers, which are generally fine of plumage, and has been a rarity here in the past, but may be becoming more common. Its favorite nesting material is the Usnea lichen, which used to be very rare here, but in this millennium with its profound warming trend has become quite common. It hangs from trees in the manner of Spanish moss of southern wetlands and swampy forests.

While Vicki and the Rubinsteins were tramping around in the woods, I was working in my yard all day while listening to orioles, catbirds, Carolina wrens, great crested flycatchers, chickadees, tufted titmice, cardinals, and robins carrying on. But next door something yellow caught my eye. It was splashing around in my neighbor’s birdbath with two blackbird types. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a bird I had never seen before and one that is quite uncommon in these parts, a male yellow-headed blackbird. It was striking. I called up my neighbor Ellen Stahl to find out if she saw it. “No, I didn’t, but did you see the male rose-breasted grosbeak taking a bath.” I had not, but later on in the day I heard one singing its robin-like song.

While examining the trees in the yard I noticed a few canker worms hanging on threads, but no gypsy moth caterpillars. We may be blessed with another gypsy-moth-less year, but it is too early to tell. After a winter of the likes we’ve just experienced, the little hairy devils could emerge later than usual.

On the other hand, the number of tent caterpillars around is worrisome. They attack species of the rose family genus, Prunus, and, in particular, black cherries and beach plums, two of our most common wild fruit-bearing species. As soon as the eggs hatch out in the spring, the larvae cooperative spins threads to create a nest in the crotch of a stem. They wait for the leaves to expand and during the day leave their nest to feed on them, and then crawl back into the nest to spend the night. They pretty much have the two Prunus species to themselves and can defoliate whole trees and shrubs. The larvae are hairy like gypsy moth caterpillars and so they are not the favorite of insectivorous birds. Hosing them off with the nozzle set blast can readily knock them off onto the ground.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

I’m writing this heading back to saltwater from Buffalo and my first-ever visit to Niagara Falls. We crossed into Canada to view the three sections of Gahnawehta, as the Indians called them, to go aboard the vessel Hornblower — the equivalent of the Maid of the Mist from the United States side — to view the cascades from below.

The boat takes you past the relatively tame American and Bridal Falls to a point under the Horseshoe Falls very close to the impact zone where most of the falls’ six million cubic feet of water spill 165 feet every minute from the Niagara River into Lake Ontario. Awesome! The roar was deafening, the spray blinding. That’s a lot of water, actually the highest flow of any falls in the world.

I found myself offering up a silent prayer to Hornblower’s engine. Please don’t fail. The swirling currents of clear green water would surely bring a stalled boat within reach of the impact zone and a wipeout of major proportions. The biggest waves in the world have got nothin’ on mighty Gahnawehta.

Halfway through the 10-hour drive south the next day, we passed over the Susquehanna River on Route 20. The river, one of the longest in the country, flows to the Chesapeake Bay.

Just beyond Fishs Eddy, N.Y., on Route 17, I watched the Beaverkill snake through the Catskills, all light green with new leaf punctuated by the darker green of pines and fir. In places along the banks and in the shallow middle of this tributary to the mighty Delaware, fly casters flogged the surface with serpentine waves of arcing line.

Mid-May is when mayflies hatch from their nymph stage and take on the appearance that fly tiers spend winters attempting to emulate. The Beaverkill is a mecca for casters hoping to commune with the river’s brook trout.

Just off the side road to the Roscoe Diner for lunch, a fly-casting clinic was under way — about three experienced hands telling a dozen neophytes casting into the grass how it’s all in the elbow.

I called Paulie’s Tackle Shop in Montauk from the road to see how the spring migration of our beloved marine species had evolved while I was gone. Glenn Grothmann was at the helm and told me there were plenty of striped bass around. Small stripers were responding to lures cast from the usual early-season spots, Ditch Plain and in among the rocks of the Montauk moorlands. Larger keeper size bass (over 28 inches in length) were falling to clam baits along south-facing beaches from Montauk to Shinnecock.

Hurling baited hooks seaward with a surf rod has always seemed strange to me, but it is a discipline unto itself, a more laid back approach to fishing, more Huck Finn. Stick the rod butt into its sand anchor, sit back and have a beer until the reel screams for your attention. 

The more cerebral anglers among us — I’m referring to bait-eschewing saltwater flycasters — are seeking the relatively windless shallows of Three Mile Harbor and the south end of Lake Montauk to sight-cast for meandering striped bass. Reports of large bunker (menhaden) schools bode well for an early season visit by larger striped bass. Bass love bunker.

From the banks of Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett and Springs you might have seen a large boat nestled in Cherry Harbor on the west side of Gardiner’s Island. It was likely a party boat from Montauk’s Viking Fleet plying a spot known to produce porgies this time of year.

The porgy (scup) season for recreational anglers started on May 1. The bag limit is 30 per day measuring at least 10 inches.

The fluke (summer flounder) season for sport fishermen began on Sunday, and it seems like it’s gotten off to a good start on both bay and ocean sides. The more liberal catch limits that took effect last season are the same, five fluke per day at 18 inches. 

Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett reported the better fluking in Gardiner’s Bay is taking place around Cartwright Shoals on the southern end of Gardiner’s Island. He said an early and spotty showing of squid seems to have disappeared due to schools of squid-hungry bluefish. Time to get the smokers ready to receive the blues. Remember, the catch limit for bluefish is 15 per day, no more than 10 of which can be “snappers,” that is, measure less than 12 inches in length.

From brook trout to bluefin tuna (the latter reportedly seen off the coast of western Long Island) the fish are migrators either to spawn or to feed, and the prognosis looks good for summer of 2015.

I walked east along the rocky beach from Ditch Plain into the Montauk moorlands on Friday. The day before I’d learned a new word, “brumous.” It describes a heavy mist, a good word for Friday, for this place and time of year.

You know those ads for perfume or cologne that come in fancy magazines like Vanity Fair, a page with a fold in it? You peal back the fold and the fragrance is released. I’m going to write a book, a mystery, with a scent sealed on the pages that when peeled back reveal important plot twists, a woman’s irresistible mantrap, the wet tweed of her murderer.

Friday was the day before April’s new moon. The tide was extremely low. The sea was peeled back to reveal the rock reef, and release the sweet smell of new growth weed, mostly the bladder wrack that covers them like an army green blanket.

I walked out onto the reef peering into tidal pools that were missing the thousands of little black snails called rosettes. I wonder if they were killed by the invasion of near-shore ice over the winter. I stood on the rocks 60 yards seaward from the beach looking back at the doomed headland. I was standing at a place that had once been the beach, stretching east and west, 50 years ago when I first made the walk — a place that lays time as bare as the rocks.

Back on the sand I found fresh deer tracks heading east in the same direction I was headed. I looked up and saw two nearly obscured by fog watching me before high-tailing it. I followed, past the huge glacial erratic that surfers know as Big Rock, a rock that my young daughter called Big Panda because its lower half was black, its top capped with white cormorant guano. 

The fog grew thicker. I lost sight of deer, but their tracks told me they were not far ahead. I was looking down, absently searching for examples of Montauk’s perfectly wave-rounded granite when a rough growl stopped my right foot from stepping onto a gray seal. He would probably have bitten me, and I wouldn’t have blamed him, or her. Dumb biped. She was upset, growled, shifted her position, looked toward the sea, then back at me as though to say, “Look, the tide is low. It’s a long crawl back to the water. I was waiting for it to come to me. Give me a break.”

I commiserated, spoke to her in a calming tone like you would an excited dog. We locked eyes for a minute or two, she decided I wasn’t a threat, and rested her chin on the sand. “First, the nosy deer, now you. I’m going back to sleep,” she said.

I continued on to my favorite cove, sat on a patch of red garnet sand, and watched the two deer climb up the bluff through a stand of phragmites into the shad and holly where a pond had been before the ocean drank it. I skated there once.

On the way back west, I walked out onto the reef again, this time looking for fishing lures that had been cast last fall, held fast to the seaweed’s “holdfast” roots, and abandoned with a curse.

The casting began last Wednesday, but not the catching as far as I know. April 15 is the start of the state’s striped bass season. I doubt the fish recognized it this year. The ocean remains a cold 41 degrees as of this writing.

On the other hand, a friend described seeing a white cascade of gannets diving on a school of what? Alewives, mackerel, is it too early for squid? Odd to see gannets this early, so they must be hungry for prey that striped bass and bluefish will also find appetizing.

Good news for those competing in the Montauk SurfMasters spring shootout. It officially begins on May 15. The “shootout” (come on guys, isn’t there a better name? Has the beach turned into the O.K. Corral?). How ’bout spring cast-out, or spring fling-a-thing?

This year, the fling-a-ling is a seven-week tournament ending on July 4. A week was added to take advantage of the big moon in July. The entry fee is $100 for adults, free for kids. An awards barbecue is planned for July 12. More information can be gotten from the Montauk SurfMasters website.